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May 22, 2019

By Joseph Marks

10-13 minutes

THE KEY

Bernard
C. Jack Young gives his acceptance speech after being sworn in as
Baltimore's 51st mayor. (Marvin Joseph/The Washington Post)

Baltimore still isn’t able to provide basic city services two weeks after a powerful ransomware attack. And a full recovery may take months, Mayor Bernard C. “Jack” Young says.
The
damage includes police surveillance cameras that are shut down and
utilities payment systems that were forced offline. Broad phone and
email outages are also forcing city workers to do what work they can
with personal laptops and email accounts, Ars Technica’s Sean Gallagher reports.
Baltimore’s
real estate market was effectively shut down for two weeks, leaving
people unable to buy or sell homes before the city developed a
paper-based workaround Tuesday, the Baltimore Sun’s Ian Duncan reports.The
Baltimore damage highlights the far-reaching consequences of ransomware
— which hackers use to lock up a victim’s computer systems and data and
demand a hefty fine to release them — on U.S. cities and the costs
to American citizens.It also raises the specter of how outdated city computer systems are vulnerable to even worse attacks. One
of the greatest fears is that ransomware could affect emergency
services -- including, say, crippling police and ambulances -- and
endangering public safety. While those services were unaffected in the
recent Baltimore attack, the city knows it’s vulnerable because it's
been hit before. A ransomware attack
in 2018 shut down for several hours an automated system Baltimore
emergency workers use to locate people who call 911 and pinpoint the
nearest police car or ambulance.It's a major problem across the U.S. There
have been more than 170 ransomware attacks that hit state and local
governments since 2013, according to the research firm Recorded Future.
And once ransomware attackers realize they’ve compromised a city, they
often “take advantage of the fact by targeting the most sensitive or
valuable data to encrypt,” the Recorded Future report states.And
there's a big financial cost no matter which direction city leaders
choose. It's expensive either to pay the ransom, or stand up to them and
deal with the eventual damage. Baltimore has been tight-lipped
about how the attack occurred because the FBI is investigating it. But
officials did say they refused to pay the ransom, which totaled about
$100,000 in bitcoin.
In the best-known case, a ransomware attack against Atlanta — which prosecutors pinned on
Iranian government-linked hackers — cost that city’s taxpayers more
than $9 million. The attack shut down online city services, required
police and courts to file paperwork by hand and forced the city to halt court proceedings for anyone who wasn't already in jail.
The FBI now says it “doesn’t support paying a ransom.” But that guidance came out following a backlash
after a top official acknowledged the bureau sometimes did suggest
companies pay if there was no better way to unlock their systems.
According to Recorded Future, 17 percent of cities attacked with
ransomware pay the ransom.Cities are especially
vulnerable to digital attacks because their IT systems tend to be older
and more complex than those of private-sector organizations. And they’re often struggling with tight budgets that result in too few staff charged with keeping those systems secure.
Things are especially bad in Baltimore.
“According
to a 2018 strategy document, Baltimore spends about half of what other
cities budget for IT, and the Office of Information Technology only
controls about 1 percent of the total budget,” Sean reported. The city
also burned through four IT chiefs who were all fired or forced to
resign within five years before Chief Information Officer Frank Johnson
took the helm in 2017, Sean reported.
Cybersecurity experts were quick to point out how that shortsighted IT management may cost the city a lot of pain in the future.
Here’s the Center for Democracy and Technology’s Maurice Turner:

Gov math is funny: won’t budget $ for prevention but always find $$$ for recovery.Worst
part is “many city workers have had to resort to using their own
laptops w/o a connection to city networks, as well as personal e-mail
& cell phones”.So secure 🙄https://t.co/v4ce0JvT5v

There
are some serious problems with Baltimore's DR plan. It's obvious that
investment was missing across city infrastructure before the ransomware
attack. What is it going to take to get municipalities to pay attention?https://t.co/lQjD2iohSh

Some
cities are trying to hedge against ransomware attacks by buying
insurance that pays out in the event of cyberattacks. Baltimore,
however, lacks that coverage, Sean reported. “So the cost of cleaning up
… will be borne entirely by Baltimore's citizens.”

You are reading The Cybersecurity 202, our must-read newsletter on cybersecurity policy news.

PINGED:
The Trump administration is considering blacklisting another Chinese
company from U.S. markets over digital spying concerns, my colleague David J. Lynch reports.
The
possible move against Hikvision, the world’s largest maker of video
surveillance technology, comes less than a week after the Commerce
Department added the Chinese telecom Huawei to a list that will restrict
U.S. companies from selling it software or components. Commerce later
granted companies a 90-day reprieve to finish up business with Huawei.
“Hikvision supplies surveillance cameras that the Chinese government has
deployed throughout the Muslim-majority Xinjiang region to combat what
it describes as separatist terrorism,” David reported.
The
company was among five Chinese firms Congress banned from selling to the
government in a defense policy bill last year citing national security
concerns. The others were: Huawei, ZTE, Hytera and Dahua.Huawei, meanwhile, is taking its case to European governments and describing the United States as a bully, the Wall Street Journal’s Emre Peker and Dan Strumpf report. “Now it is happening to Huawei. Tomorrow it can happen to any other international company. This is dangerous,” Huawei’s Vice President for the European Region Abraham Liu told reporters in Brussels, according to the report.
European governments may be receptive. They have a history of pushing
back on U.S. pressure where Huawei is concerned and have been
especially resistant to U.S. pleas to ban the telecom from their
next-generation 5G wireless networks. “Europe, along with the Middle
East and Africa, generated 28 percent of Huawei’s $107 billion in
revenue last year and was the company’s fastest-growing region,” the
Journal reported.
“European telecom companies — which have used
Huawei gear in their networks and often also sell Huawei smartphones —
have so far stuck by the company. Vodafone Group PLC and BT Group PLC, two big U.K. carriers, have publicly said they want to continue using Huawei gear in their 5G networks,” according to the report.

Congressional
Black Caucus Chairman Cedric Richmond (D-La.) speaks during a news
conference with members of the caucus and members of the House Judiciary
Committee at the Capitol on January 18, 2018. (Win McNamee/Getty
Images)

PATCHED: The lack of diversity among government cybersecurity workers could lead to groupthink and not spotting new threats, Rep. Cedric Richmond (D-La.) said Tuesday.
During
the opening of a hearing by the House Homeland Security Committee's
cybersecurity subcommittee, which he chairs, Richmond cited studies that
found just 11 percent of the cybersecurity workforce is female and less
than 15 percent is African American or Hispanic.
“My
concern is that having such a homogenous workforce could lead to blind
spots and, potentially, intelligence failures — particularly for federal
agencies like the Department of Homeland Security,” Richmond said.
He also criticized the Trump administration for producing an executive order focused on enlarging the cybersecurity workforce this month without making explicit efforts to improve its diversity.
"Officials
reportedly explained that they ‘hoped diversity would be a natural
byproduct’ of the order,” he said. “This is exactly the type of thinking
we cannot afford to have if we are serious about reversing trends.”
Here’s more on the hearing from Nextgov’s Brandi Vincent.

Republican Brian Kemp speaks after being sworn in as Georgia's governor. (John Bazemore/AP)

PWNED:
A federal judge is allowing to move forward a lawsuit challenging
Georgia’s outdated voting machines and demanding that hand-marked paper
ballots be used across the state, the Associated Press’s Kate Brumback reported Tuesday.
“The
lawsuit argues that the paperless touchscreen voting machines Georgia
has used since 2002 are unsecure, vulnerable to hacking and unable to be
audited,” Brumback reported.
“The state’s voting system drew
national scrutiny during last year’s midterm election in which Brian
Kemp, a Republican who was the state’s chief election officer at the
time, narrowly defeated Democrat Stacey Abrams to become Georgia’s
governor,” the report notes.
Since the election, Georgia approved a new set of voting machines statewide that include a paper record but aren’t marked by hand.
Here’s more on the case from election security reporter Kim Zetter.

The plaintiffs assert that the state's continued use of paperless DREmachines is an undue burden on their fundamentalright to vote in violation of their constitutional rights to due process and equalprotection. Here's the ruling and opinion: https://t.co/0vRZt6PMjOpic.twitter.com/wFzk93rlX0

In advance of the 2020 elections, a new federal law proposed on Tuesday
seeks to remove impediments faced by national political committees when
seeking to help shore up the cybersecurity of their state-level
counterparts. Gizmodo

The move benefited a Chinese-backed company with a plant in the House minority leader’s California district. Damian Paletta and Erica Werner

Lawyers for a decorated Navy SEAL accused of murder want a prosecutor
and judge removed over allegations of spying on defense emails to find
the source of news leaks Brian Melley and Julie Watson | AP

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